All Blog Posts Tagged 'Identity' (16)

According to IDC, the Cloud, Mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT) sectors combined will spend more than $8 trillion by 2017 (IoT = $7.3T, Cloud = $107B, Mobile = $1T)—all of which require identity. Identity is a fundamental requirement to digital growth. Businesses and organizations cannot properly take advantage of these technologies without a scalable and repeatable identity strategy. Without it, they have no way to identify and engage with their customers in meaningful ways — whether it…

Buckminster Fuller once wrote, "there is nothing in the caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” It’s true that often our capacity to look at things and truly understand their final form is very limited. Nor can we necessarily predict what happens when many small changes combine – when small pebbles roll down a hillside and turn in a landslide that dams a river and floods a plain.

Two once-distinct markets are on course for convergence: mobility and identity. It’s a merger that will drive success for vendors that get the blend right — and could spell trouble for vendors that once prospered by focusing on mobility or identity alone.

Only a couple of years ago, emerging companies that specialized in either mobility or identity did quite well. Identity and access management (IAM) vendors like Okta rose to prominence by enabling enterprise users to easily access…

The most important question confronting businesses today is how to connect customers digitally to relevant goods and services in the most effective way. Many organizations have already begun tackling several digital initiatives at once, ranging from mobile to cloud and the Internet of Things (IoT) -- which is one reason why IDC projects businesses will spend more than $8 trillion in these three areas by 2017. But there’s a catch: while all three of these areas are indeed important for…

This most recent online attack out of Russia is news because it is the largest on record, but apart from the numbers -- 1.2 billion credentials is staggering -- the story is the same one we’ve been hearing for years. Usernames and passwords are being stolen at an ever increasing rate, and our money is being stolen.

Unfortunately, for most major retailers, the incentive to act as an Internet Security change agent isn’t very high. While the losses might appear to be dramatic to most…

Let's face it, Healthcare has much to be gained by going digital with medical and health records and sharing of information. The Federal Government has allocated $24B in funding as of March 2014 to promote the use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and yet the US still falls behind other countries in the use of digital patient information. (See Infographic for…

How safe is your identity? According to Javelin's 2014 Identity Fraud Report, 13.1 million people fell victim to identity theft in 2013, and with the Target and Heartbleed breaches, that number is guaranteed to go up in 2014. Anyone can become a victim of identity theft if they are not careful, which is why it's important to know what steps you can take to protect yourself. How can I avoid becoming a…

As the adoption of cloud-based applications increase and more IT departments embrace BYOD, employees, contractors, partners and customers are all accessing corporate applications and data from multiple devices across all global regions. The resulting benefits -- productivity gains, customer satisfaction, cost savings and greater efficiency -- are met by an increased security risk of exposing sensitive personal and corporate information.

Passwords are security’s most widely deployed technology -- and its weakest link. Lost, stolen, and compromised passwords are a routine vector for security breaches–76% of which can be traced to stolen credentials. Another 13% of breaches resulted from credential misuse by trusted insiders, both according to the most recent Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. And while we most often concern ourselves with…

Earlier this year, I wrote about the proliferation of applications businesses are using to run their operations. On average, companies are using up to 50 on-premises applications and 25 cloud-based applications, and are allowing thousands of employees and customers to access them, along with hundreds of contractors and partners. Without technology in place to help manage all of these identities, businesses are looking at a dizzying mix of user activations and deactivations, password resets…

The hybrid cloud represents a new generation of computing. Inevitably, advancements in infrastructure bring new requirements for management solutions. There are five core capabilities essential to achieving Next Generation Privileged Identity Management.

Establish a Single Point of Control

One of the primary attractions of the hybrid cloud is flexibility. IT managers can select the platform delivering the optimal combination of cost, speed and control and then…

The great social experiment, that is Facebook is an unqualified success. The idea that a website which allows users to keep up with the personal information and rich media of friends, family and businesses could be simply and easily shared went from a few hundred colleges students to tens of thousands to well over a billion people from all walks of life. Factoids regarding Facebook abound. "If Facebook was it's own country, it would be the third largest in the world. People spend more than…

Security has always been important, but has become more challenging to provide in our BYOD, remote access, cloud service world. Businesses are using multiple dozens of cloud-based and on-premises applications like Salesforce.com, Sharepoint, Google and Dropbox to run their operations. They’re then extending access to apps not only to employees but also to external users including contractors, partners and customers who can access them via any device. The challenge for IT admins is how to…

As businesses move to cloud computing, employees are able to gain access to their work apps and corporate networks through almost any internet-connected device. As a result, they want -- and expect -- this anywhere-access on the device of their choosing.

The breadth of access, and choice of devices, breaks down traditional security boundaries and forces IT to seek a new…

There’s a reason the old saying “an ounce of prevention is worth of a pound a cure” resonates in so many situations – because it's true. In today’s risk-averse IT security environment, proactive measures definitely get their due investment, but the best kept secret in reducing risk eludes many organizations.

Reducing the threats within corporate networks, while mitigating the potential damage caused by successful breaches, is largely about managing and reducing attack surface as well…